"Someone had better forgive me for this," he said under his breath before slapping the man around the face. "We need to talk, now." The man looked terrified, pulling Jake close enough that he could whisper something in his ear which made all the colour drain out of Jake's face.

"He's dead," he said, standing up quickly. "They stabbed him with one of those knives Lena mentioned, if we'd been even a minute later he'd never have told us anything. We need to get out of here now, I'll tell you what he told me when we're back at Lena's. We need to find somewhere safe she can retrieve us from though."

" Look a closet to the right. Come on." she hurriedly grabs Jake's left arm and she runs to the closet with Jake and shuts the door as she blocks it so no one can enter it until they are safely at Lena's again.

"He was being used," Jake said as Lena entered the room with the drinks. "This was never HIS plan, they just let him think it was for as long as it was convenient to keep him alive. They killed him because they had been trying to find something, a secret Abraham Lincoln was given by a time traveller. They assumed it was in the White House, when they realised it wasn't they killed him. The fractures have had two purposes: one, destroying the Agency so we couldn't thwart their plans and two, forcing whoever had the item to reveal the fact to the outside world."

"We have an advantage over them," Jake said with a smile. "I found something in the newspapers earlier which I've only just realised the significance of. There's an artefact that Lincoln gave to a museum in his will. No-one could figure out what it was for but its the one thing that has never changed during all the time fractures. I'm wondering if that's what we're looking for."

"That's the weird thing," Jake replied. "I can find lots of references to an item hidden in a museum vault but either its kept under the highest security imaginable or no-one in the museum has opened the vault in a very long time. There's a reference to an unknown visitor giving it to Lincoln but that's about it."

"Best way to do it would be to retrieve it as close to the time Lincoln was given it as possible," Lena said. "Otherwise all it would need would be them to retrieve it earlier than we did and we'd have a massive time paradox, which is about the only scenario WORSE than a fracture."

"Which means breaking into the White House again," Jake said with a sigh.

"Not necessarily," Lena replied. "We can't be sure it was ever in the White House, if you could take it while it's being transported there's a chance it may not have a guard. After all they'd want to avoid it drawing attention from unwanted eyes."

she nods her head while she listens and makes all three of them some sandwhiches and iced tea. Then she puts everything on the table with bags of chips to go with the sandwhiches. " Come on and have lunch while we discuss things."

"I'm not sure," Lena said with a shrug. "That covers a huge distance, we'd have to study a map and make sure we pick the right spot. We can't be sure we'll get a second chance at this. Who fancies studying a map for a few hours?"